HomeSearchMerchandiseAboutMichael HorowitzMy Computerworld Blog

My Windows XP Gripes Windows XP came after Windows ME and Windows 2000

August 19, 2006. Conflicting signal strength. Windows XP SP2 on a 4 year old IBM ThinkPad with a D-Link WiFi B PCMCIA card. When viewing the list of available networks, the WEP enabled one in the same room with the computer shows up with a very poor signal strength (only a single green stripe). However, after connecting to the network, the Local Area Connection Status window always shows it with a excellent signal strength (all green stripes on). One of them has to be wrong. 

August 15, 2006. WiFi on an IBM ThinkPad running Windows XP SP2 with all patches applied. Even though Windows was not in charge of controlling the WiFi connection, it connected to my WiFi network all by itself. At first, I was using Windows to control the WiFi connection. Then I told it not to be in charge and ran the NIC card management software from DLink (it was an old WiFi B PCMCIA card that only did WEP). While poking around in the DLink application, the computer connected to my WiFi network on its own. The DLink software did not do it, it could not have because I hadn't told it the WEP key. The DLink software thought I was offline. However, I was in fact connected to my network and the Internet. 

August 12, 2006. I tried Control Panel -> Network Connections. Then asked for the status of the LAN connection on machines connected to the net via a LAN and router. On one XP Home computer it did nothing at all. On another XP Pro machine, it worked fine. There were no errors in any of the system logs.  

July 28, 2006.  WiFi and Windows won't shut up. New Lenovo ThinkPad with built-in WiFi. All patches applied. I don't want to use WiFi, so the radio is turned off (there is a switch on the side of the machine). I have also told Windows not to nag me about WiFi. That is, I have turned off both checkboxes in the network connection properties that tell Windows to inform the user about the connection status. Specifically, "Show icon in notification area when connected" and "Notify me when the connection has limited or no connectivity." Both options are off. Yet, I still see the WiFi network connection icon in the system tray/notification area and I am still warned at startup time with a yellow balloon popup that the WiFi network is not connected. XP just won't shut up. Even five years after its release, simple easy trivial things like this still go wrong. It must be nice to be a monopoly and have no competition pushing you to do a good job.

August 8, 2006. I experienced the problem below (dated July 8, 2006) yet again, on another XP SP2 machine. Since System Restore was broken, I turned it off and rebooted. Then I turned it on. All went well. However, it still would not make a Restore Point. The underlying System Restore service is running and correctly configured for an Automatic startup. There is lots of free hard drive space.  System Restore backups of the C disk are stored in a folder with a name like:  C:\System Volume Information\_restore{DB936872-DE83-9ED6-879C-E5E9941F68AC}  The last portion of the folder name is probably a GUID and thus differs on each computer. Each Restore Point is in a folder named RP99 where the 99 is a restore point number. On the computer in question, there were a handful of RPxx folders. The Disk Cleanup utility was able to find these folders and correctly deleted all of them except for the last one. Still, Windows won't make a restore point.  On a computer where System Restore was functioning correctly, I could not access the System Volume Information folder at all - access was denied. Even on volumes that System Restore was not monitoring, I could not browse the System Volume Information folder. Even after shutting down the System Restore service, I still could not open the folder.       Drivetable.txt Sample      C:\/\\?\Volume{DB736862-DA93-4ED2-873C-E2E9741F66AC}\ 3b -1 1258 xp_pro E:\/\\?\Volume{27ed577e-20a4-11db-97a9-00046be48c3f}\ 1 0 538 DISKBK Z:\/\\?\Volume{60b68517-6f6d-14db-95a4-00076be74c3f}\ 31 0 505 bkupdata Also in this folder is a file called drivetable.txt (see above) that seems to be index of some type. It has entries for each disk drive letter on the computer (the machine above had a C, E and Z disk) and the folder where, I suspect, System Restore keeps its backups.  The last field is the volser.  On the machine with the problem, the GUID value in the drivetable.txt file did not match the actual folder name. My guess is that this is the underlying problem.  I modified the file, such that the GUID matches the folder, but this just made things worse. Now when I manually run System Restore it crashes immediately. I stopped and restarted the System Restore service and it no longer crashes, but it still won't make a restore point.  Next up: starting fresh.  I stopped the System Restore service, turned off System Restore in Windows, deleted the System Volume Information folder then rebooted. A new System Volume Information folder was created on the C disk even though System Restore was disabled and the underlying service was not running. I could not browse this new folder. Then System Restore was enabled and it still failed in the exact same way. :-(  The Registry Keys and Values for the System Restore Utility from Microsoft.

July 8, 2006. Windows XP SP2. Bug with System Restore. System Restore first came out with Windows ME in 2000 and then was included in Windows XP in 2001. Despite the 6 years of maturity, it still has bugs.

I try to make a Restore Point and it fails. The error was

System Restore is not able to create a Restore Point. Please restart the computer, and then run System Restore again.

I do, but the problem persists. The C disk is about 10GB and has about 6GB free. Originally System Restore was using the default 12% of the C disk but I lowered it to 4% (about 440MB or so) hoping it might fix the problem. It didn't, I still could not make a Restore Point. 

Yesterday I installed about a dozen bug fixes using Windows update. Not a single Restore Point was created all day, which I'm sure must be wrong.  

In System Properties -> System Restore tab it says that the C disk is being monitored. The System Restore Service is running. In the System Event Log, there are a bunch of records with Event ID of 107. This basically says that System Restore shut itself down because there wasn't sufficient space available. At one point there were five 107 events in a row on the System Event Log. 

After a reboot, there was a record with EventID of 108 saying that the System Restore service has resumed due to space freed on the system drive. But as soon as I try to make a Restore Point, the System Restore service suspends itself. The underlying Windows service is still running. 

I turned off System Restore completely which frees up all space it was using and removes all Restore Points. Then I rebooted and turned it back on, but this too, had no effect, I still can't make a Restore Point because it incorrectly thinks there is not enough space. 

I deleted the System Volume Information folder while System Restore was disabled. Then I restarted System Restore but it still does not work, although it is no longer complaining of the lack of space. 

I checked that the underlying Windows service is turned on/off when the Windows GUI is used to enable/disable System Restore. It is. 

I ran a Registry cleaner in the hope that the bad registry was the underlying problem. The cleaner got rid of 113 errors, but I still can't make a restore point. I sued Registry Tune Up v1.4.0 from AceLogix Software. When I was done testing it, I restored all the registry entries it had changed. 

July 3, 2006. I was the victim of a networking bug in XP SP2.  I have a LAN at home but don't often use it for either file or printer sharing, just for Internet access sharing. Today however I tried to share a printer to no avail; kept getting a message that the list of servers in my workgroup was not available. This happened from both the machine with the printer and the one wanting to get to it. From each computer, I could ping all the others just fine and Internet connection sharing was working fine too. 

The bug is described here: When you disable the Windows Firewall service on your Windows XP Service Pack 2-based computer, the Computer Browser service stops after five minutes and Event ID 7023 is logged in the Event Viewer  also known as Article ID 889320.  

I got hit by this by being to cautious. I don't use the Windows XP firewall and don't use the ancient Internet Connection Sharing feature of Windows. Thus, I don't need the Windows Firewall and ICS service running on my machines. So I changed the service to a manual startup rather than the default of automatic. The article says this only happens if the service is disabled. Not true. It also happens if its configured to manually start. The five minutes however is correct. After starting the Computer Browser service, it shut itself down after five minutes. So, for now, I'm forced to run the Windows Firewall service. 

June 19, 2006.  On my Velocity Micro desktop machine with XP SP2 and all bug fixes, the date does not always popup when I hover the mouse over the time in the bottom right corner of the screen (system tray, a.k.a notification area). I installed the latest video driver from Intel (machine has integrated graphics) just a couple weeks ago.

May 20, 2006.  I don't use Outlook Express. Today however, I ran it for a minute to research a question I was asked. OE started Windows Messenger. Minor annoyance, I shut down messenger. But, at the next re-boot Windows Messenger is back in the system tray. Overly aggressive marketing by Microsoft. 

July 31, 2005. One of many very poor default settings in Windows XP SP2 has to do with dealing with Windows after it has crashed. Nerds refer to this as the Blue Screen of Death or BSOD, referring to the fact that Windows died. The default value is to automatically re-start the computer, meaning you get no chance to see the error that caused the problem. It also means that you may think the problem is the re-booting out of the blue, when in fact, that is not the real problem, the real problem is being masked by the auto-reboot. This happened to me. 

July 9, 2005. The first time you start a new Windows XP SP2 computer, it asks some confusing questions. To configure networking, it asks how the computer will connect to the Internet. One choice is cable modem/DSL. The other choice is a Local Area Network. There is no option for dial-up modem users. 

April 16, 2005. Icons. Windows XP SP1 with all bug fixes, except SP2. Today the icons on the desktop lined up along the left side. I did not do it on purpose, the icons had been scattered all over the desktop in an arrangement of my own doing. This may have been caused by applying the 6 bug fixes released on April 12, 2005.

April 15, 2005. Windows XP SP1 with all bug fixes except SP2. This happened to me on two different XP computers within a couple days. I tried to run Check Disk. The full checking requires exclusive access the hard disk and thus has to run as part of the Windows startup process. The utility can't run in both Windows XP and 2000 until you restart Windows. Fine. However, at start-up time, the utility failed because it could not get exclusive access to the hard disk. A quick Google search found bugs in Windows, ZoneAlarm and Norton AntiVirus that might be causing this. Both machines were running NAV 2004 and ZoneAlarm and both programs were configured to run automatically at start-up time (as they normally are). One machine had ZoneAlarm version 5.5.062, I'm not sure the ZoneAlarm version on the other one. In both cases, I modified NAV and ZA so they did not run automatically at start-up and this fixed the problem. 

January 27, 2005. I did a clean install of XP Professional on a new, unformatted hard disk on a Dell laptop. After installing XP "classic" and making a couple trivial tweaks to it, I installed Service Pack 2. SP2 changed the screen resolution from 1024x768 16 bit to 800x600 and 32 bit. It also changed the IE home page back to Microsoft and increased the size of the IE cache, after I had lowered it (the default is way too high). It also reset changes I had made to the IE toolbar. 

January 8, 2005. On a Windows XP SP1 machine (with all current bug fixes) there is an icon on the desktop for a file called desktop.ini. Why? It was not put there on purpose by the user. The contents of the file are: 
   [LocalizedFileNames]
  Windows Media Player.lnk=@C:\WINDOWS\inf\unregmp2.exe,-4

January 2, 2005. Windows XP SP2 got good reviews for its new WiFi configuration interface. Well, the old interface must have been really bad because the new one is lacking. My main gripe is that you can't tell Windows to connect to a WiFi network that is not broadcasting its SSID. For security, it is better not to have the router broadcast the SSID to the world at large. However, if you do this, then Windows won't show the network in its list of available networks (to be expected) and it is only from this list that you can manually tell Windows to connect to a wireless network. The only way to connect to a network that doesn't broadcast its SSID is to tell Windows to automatically connect to it, which is not good for security. In contrast, the software I've used from vendors of WiFi cards always lets you define a network (SSID, password, etc.) and manually connect to it, even if the SSID is not being broadcast. 

Also, software for managing a WiFi network adapter from other vendors can show you the signal strength of a network that is not broadcasting its SSID and that you are not connected to. Windows XP SP2 can not do this. As a result, if you fail to connect to a network with Windows, you have no clue whether the problem is signal strength or a software problem. 

Finally, the Windows display of available networks shows the signal strength for each network, but does not show the channel being used by each network. This is needed if you want to configure your network to a channel that is not being used in your area and thus avoid interference. 

December 17, 2004. I put a data CD in a fairly new XP machine and it caused a camera wizard to run that wanted to transfer pictures on the CD. There was no camera. 

October 21, 2004. First boot. Starting a new Dell Dimension for the very first time asks the user a number of questions. One is how do you connect to the Internet. The choices are DSL or LAN. There is no dial-up choice. There is no obvious choice for people using cable modems either by directly connecting the cable modem to a single computer or by connecting it to a router and then connecting your computer to the router. 

May 28, 2004. Paging file (a.k.a swap file): Windows XP Home, all critical bug fixes applied. The paging file resides in the root of the C disk and is called pagefile.sys. I noticed that the size of the paging file seemed a bit big so I told Windows XP the initial and maximum size I wanted. Reboot and nothing happens. The size does not change. I try it again, same thing. I check the three system logs and there are no errors. Then I told Windows XP not to use a paging file at all. That it honored, after rebooting there was no pagefile.sys file. Then I told Windows to use my customized initial and maximum size and it immediately created the pagefile.sys file in the initial size I asked for. No re-boot needed. 

I thought I was done. But no. The next time the computer started up, the page file went back to the original size. The settings, just like when I started with this, are still configured to use a custom size for the page file, but Windows is ignoring this and allocating a large page file irregardless. 

A few days later I restored Windows XP from a disk image backup made a month earlier. This edition of Windows obeyed the commands for sizing the swap file. In terms of bug fixes, the older version was missing two patches: KB831167 for IE6 and KB840374 a security update to Windows XP. 

Update: July 28, 2005. A reader of this page had the exact same problem. He (thanks, Mike) posted a plea about it as "virtual memory settings ignored" on microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, to no avail. Then he did more investigation and came up with a "fix". 

First, he monitored the relevant registry key using Sysinternals Regmon and the problem disappeared. To keep the settings non-volatile across a re-boot, Regmon had to be set to boot-log mode. If Regmon was not running, the problem re-appeared, apparently consistently. This seemed to indicate a problem with kernel-mode drivers, as Regmon uses its own driver to hook calls from NTOSKRNL. He then found that the remaining volatility across a re-boot was fixed by booting to Safe Mode (Clean booting using msconfig had no effect). Using the System Information tool to find the drivers that were not loaded in Safe Mode, he noticed that a lot of them were associated with Norton Anti-Virus. After experimenting with various NAV configurations, the problem was fixed by turning off loading NAV auto-protect during boot (it still loads, but late in the boot sequence). 

He was using Norton AntiVirus 2004 (version 10.0.1.13). The computer where I noticed this problem was also using NAV 2004. After a few days, he noted that the "fix" is still holding. Specifically, turning   "Auto-Protect -> Advanced -> Load Auto-Protect during system boot" on and off is sufficient to re-introduce and then to clear the bug (the failure to honor page file changes across a reboot). 

Update: January 12, 2006. Yet another person reports the same problem, also with no answer. Can't set paging file in XP 2006/01/09
Update: February 21, 2006. I tried this on a very old copy of Windows XP, one without Norton AntiVirus. It worked fine. 
Update: February 24, 2006. I tried it on an up-to-date copy of XP Pro and it worked fine again. This machine had no Symantec software on it. The increase in the page file size took effect immediately, there was no need to reboot. The decrease in size did require a reboot. 
A reader of this page was having similar problems. He was setting the page file size very low and Windows was ignoring the request and using 1.5 times the amount of ram. He speculates that if you set the page file size too low (below 20-30MB), then Windows ignores it and assign 1.5 times installed RAM instead. 

Hovering over the time: Normally when the mouse hovers over the time in the system tray, the date and day of the week pops up in a yellow balloon. Not today. Hovering over the time produced no balloon. Hovering over other icons in the system tray did produce their normal yellow balloon pop-ups. Only the time did not work. 

April 4, 2004. I want to add a second hard disk to a Windows XP computer. Before doing so, I need to set the jumpers on the disk to either "Master" or "Slave" or "Cable select". To do this, you need to know how things are currently set up. That is, for each IDE channel, you need to know the devices on it and whether each device is a "Master" or a "Slave" or a "Cable Select". Windows XP can not tell you this. Device manager gives you some information about each IDE channel, but not this. System Information does not provide this either. 

December 4, 2003. Windows XP Home with all critical patches as of November 28, 2003 applied. 
The computer boots up and runs with an application CD in the DVD burner drive. Then the disc is removed, a new CD-R inserted and files are burnt to the new CD-R disc - but it fails. The files are burnt using the built-in Windows facility for doing so: Right click on a directory and select Send To -> DVD burner drive letter. Then go to the DVD burner drive letter and select File -> Burn these files to disc (or something to that affect). This fails because Windows still thinks the application CD is in the drive. It's not. Windows is also still showing the icon for the application. 

Getting rid of the Welcome screen and setting up one user as the default in Windows XP Home Edition is very hard. In Windows 2000 it was simple. In XP you need to know the secret handshake (Run "control userpasswords2" and it should open a new window entitled user accounts). 

A while after installing a fresh copy of Windows XP on a virgin hard disk, it warned at start-up time that the password was about to expire in a few days. This machine was set up as described above, there is no welcome screen, instead it automatically logs on a default user. The gripe is that the Windows XP UI does not allow you to configure the userid so that the password never expires. Again, you have to know the secret "control userpasswords2" command. Later, I found this in PC Magazine Prevent Password Expiration  from August 19, 2003. 
Update. January 8, 2005. A reader of this page said that the "control userpasswords2" trick did not work with XP Home Edition SP2 (thanks Ron). It also failed on XP Home with SP1 when I tried it. Seems this trick to make passwords never expire only works with XP Professional. Specifically, clicking on the Advanced tab and then the Advanced button opens a new window with this error message: "This computer is running Windows XP Home Edition. This snapin may not be used with that version of Windows." It was suggested to search the registry for keys named "maximumpasswordage" and change their values to "ffffffff". I haven't verified that this works. 

I ran into this problem: The New Hardware Wizard May Detect the Printer Device After Every Restart of the Computer. After installing a printer and its driver and having everything work fine, the computer finds a new printer at every boot up. The new printer is the one it already knows about. Lo and behold, this is a known bug in Windows XP for which there is no fix. Microsoft says to contact the printer vendor (no surprise there). This also happens with some HP printers. It took a lot of time, but I fixed the problem, see my Samsung printer gripes. November 2003. 

November 28, 2003. Environment: Task Manager on XP Home. All critical updates applied. 
When I minimize Task Manager it disappears instead of creating an icon in the system. Right clicking on the task bar and selecting Task Manager brings it back to life. I can tell that it was still running while invisible by the graphs on the performance tab. On another Windows XP Home machine, also with all critical updates applied (as of November 28, 2003), it works correctly. Task Manager is version 5.1 and the "hide when minimized" option is on. This normally causes Task Manager to appear as a small icon in the system tray rather than an entry in the task bar. Task Manager is Build 2600.xpsp2.030422-1633: Service Pack 1. This also happened to me on an XP Pro machine with assorted patches applied (but not SP1). Task Manager was also version 5.1 on that machine. 
Update. August 14, 2004. A reader of this page has experienced this problem too and wrote to say that if you kill Task Manager from itself and then launch a new instance, the problem disappears. I have not yet verified this. 
Update. September 20, 2004. A reader of this page confirmed that the above fix works. I have not yet been able to verify this myself. 
Update. October 7, 2004. I was finally able to confirm this myself (it doesn't happen often and I don't use XP often). Another reader of this page also confirmed that the fix works.  
Update. October 21, 2004. The fix does not always work. On a new XP machine, with SP2 and all bug fixes applied, I still had this problem and killing Task Manager itself did not fix it. 
Update: January 9, 2005. I give up. No more Task Manager for me. Process Explorer from Sysinternals.com is much better anyway and has no bugs. 
Update: January 30, 2005. A reader of this page pointed out a discussion thread about various Task Manager quirks
Update: September 12, 2005. On an XP Professional machine with all Windows patches applied, this still happens. 

November 2003.  After installing AOL version 8, a new Windows XP Home Edition computer started showing the number of email messages on the Welcome screen. Getting rid of this required zapping the registry. It shouldn't be so hard to get rid of this annoying feature. 

November 28, 2003. All USB ports are not created equal. An XP Home Edition computer is hooked up an external USB based WiFi network adapter. It works fine. Then one day it's unplugged from the computer and plugged in again later. The Found New Hardware wizard kicks in. It's not new hardware. Turns out that XP is sensitive to the specific USB port the device was plugged into. When its plugged back into the exact same USB port, Windows recognizes it from before and all is well. This was on a computer with all critical updates applied.

November 2003. Making Windows XP do nothing when a CD is inserted is way too hard. You have to configure the properties of the CD drive letter for many different types of files that are on the CD and for each type of file tell XP to do nothing. Even this, did not prevent a program disc from automatically running the application when it was inserted. I searched the web and found a registry zap to turn off AutoPlay and it didn't work. Then I searched again and found another registry zap and this one worked. It shouldn't be this hard. Non-technical users moving from older versions of Windows can get confused by the varying automatic actions XP takes. One of the zaps was at http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com. It modifies 

   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

such that NoDriveTypeAutoRun is set to a Data Value of: dword:0x000000FF